Grants: LEF Scholarship for Girls

The Challenge

1.6 million girls aged 11 to 14 years are currently out of school in India, according to a Right to Education Forum policy brief released on January 24, 2021. With COVID-19 increasing the financial strain on families, 10 million girls run the risk of dropping out of secondary school, putting them at risk of early marriage, early pregnancy, poverty, trafficking and violence.

Our Intervention

The LEF Scholarship for Girls aims to reduce the drop-out rate of girls from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. This will be done by providing financial aid to the keep girls enrolled through classes VIII, IX and X.

The scholarship will be funded by the founders of Live Equal Foundation (LEF) and supportive members of the society.

Scholarship Benefits:

A scholarship grant of up to INR 10,000 per student per annum will be provided to the selected candidates. To ensure continued enrolment, the grant amount will be disbursed term-wise. The scholarship can be utilised only towards the reimbursement of school fees and/or hostel fees.

Eligibility criteria:

• Open to girl students from any state or UT in India.
• Applicants must be enrolled in Class VIII, Class IX or Class X in a recognised educational institute in India at the time of applying.
• Annual family income of the candidates from all sources should not be more than INR 3,60,000.

Number of scholarships planned: 100

Fundraising target: INR 10,00,000.

Fundraising end date: December 15, 2021.

Key milestones:

Stage 1: Creation of scholarship corpus

Stage 2: Announcement of scholarship via government and private scholarship portals

Stage 3: Screening of applications received

Stage 4: Final shortlisting of eligible candidates, basis merit and financial need

Stage 5: Disbursement of first tranche of scholarship to selected candidates

Stage 6: Review of enrolment status before disbursal of subsequent tranche

Estimated Project timeline:

Announcement of scholarship: December 20, 2021

Initiation of grant process: February 15, 2022.

Partnership Opportunities

1: Scholarship screening and management:

Established e-platforms can reach out for managing the Acceptance-> Verification-> Shortlisting -> Disbursement components of the scholarship

2: Corpus creation:

Individuals and/or organisations can contribute towards the creation of an annual scholarship corpus of INR 10,00,000.